I’m the new kid around the block.
I’m Rob, been developing stuff for quite a while, nocode, lowcode, code…
I’ve used Elementor for so much time I can’t even remember, but their recent decisions made me look for an alternative. So here we are.
Before switching though, I’ve some doubts that you guys might address for me,
Future proof, how is Bricks in terms of future and updates? I see a roadmap, but I’m wondering whether the sites that I might end up building will recieve updates, and will grow and flourish on Bricks.
Dev experience, I saw bricks has an API, are the docs any good? Seemed a little weak to me, but I just went through it supafast, so might be a that I didn’t give it enough attention.
Multilingual, I saw that the major Multilingual Plugins are still in the “In Progress” stage, how complicated is it to implement (in my case) WPML for example?
Performance and quality, one of the reasons that I’m interested in bricks is it’s clear code output similar to something like Webflow, clean, simple and nice to read, and work with (at least it seems) I’m probably gonna be using WP Rocket if needed, are Bricks a good fit for this caching plugin?
How do you like it? I’d really like to hear from the people of Bricks! The Bricklayers themselves! How do you find yourselves? What do you wish you knew before you switched to Bricks?
I really love, that bricks covers way too many things that Elementor natively does not, but I’m a little worried about the big stuff like Multilingual, or customizability, as these things are very important for me. I have many more questions, but these are my biggest doubts so far.
Hopefully the amount of questions won’t scare anyone off, feel free to answer any of them please! Thank you in advance!
I’ve built a Bricks site using MultilingualPress, and it worked very well—no idea about the other plugins.
Regarding your other points, I have used Bricks since it launched, and it has evolved a lot, which suggests to me that it is “future-proof”. Also, my recent interactions with the support team show that there are a few new members in the Bricks team, which again suggest that the team behind it is growing.
I build websites in collaboration with a designer and a tester for QA, and with every design I got in Figma, I was able to implement it in Bricks. All bugs reported by the QA testing I was able to fix. So I confirm Bricks Builder is ready for professional use.
For other integrations and plugs, I just started using Automatic CSS, which is fantastic for responsive builds. So far, my first ACSS build has been a success.
Other tools I used in my projects: BricksExtras and Bricks Library.
For forms, I use FluentForms and customize it via BricksExtras, and it works very well.
just my 2 cents regarding #2 dev experience and #4 performance & quality:
dev experience
Bricks has a wonderful Academy where many things for developers are explained and addressed:
Besides, here in the forum are many, many, many codes, snippets and examples of new functions, tipps & tricks and even hacks.
So from a developer point of view, Bricks is just fantastic. There are so many things I can do with Bricks and PHP that make it a dream to develop for.
performance & quality:
I came from a different page builder, the one with E in the beginning of the name, and then I had to use WPRocket to get the page speed into at least acceptable speed levels.
Now with Bricks, I don’t even use WPRocket anymore as I get a speed rating of 99% at PageSpeed Insights. The only optimization plugins I now use are “Performance Lab” (free) and “WP Meteor” (free).
Secondly, with Bricks, I was able to remove around 20 (!) plugins that I had to use with the other builder. So I am very happy to have lost all these plugins as Bricks can do most of it itself and for the rest there are available hooks and filters that can be used.
So in that respect, Bricks is fast. Very fast.
How do I like it?
I made the jump to Bricks about a year-ago and I have never looked back. I cannot imagine that I will change again. Bricks offers everything that I want and need and more. My page is way better than it was with the other builder. So my jump was successful.
Secondly, I find this community forum one of the best and especially the support from #timmse, #aslotta and #itchy is second to none.
Hey guys, lovely answers I’m getting here! I really appreciate your effort at answering me. One thing that I’ve noticed so far, is that the Editor UX is a little bit weaker, compared to other builders, are there any changes planned? I absolutely love the freedom of editing everything, and the Splide slider, but also I find it hard to drag and drop, and orientate within the editor. Also deleting with right click is not optimal. And on MacOS, sometimes the controls just stop working at all.
Thank you in advance!
I really appreciate your effort at answering me. One thing that I’ve noticed so far, is that the Editor UX is a little bit weaker, compared to other builders, are there any changes planned? I absolutely love the freedom of editing everything, and the Splide slider, but also I find it hard to drag and drop, and orientate within the editor. Also deleting with right click is not optimal. And on MacOS, sometimes the controls just stop working at all.